Andrey Vasilevsky. Doubt is (always) appropriate

Doubt is (always) appropriate
Andrey Vasilevsky

Publication date: March 1, 2004

On Sunday, February 29, Vladimir Pozner began the “Times” program with the following words - I quote from memory: “twenty days have passed since the murder of the Tajik girl, the killers have still not been found, but few doubt that she was killed by young people calling themselves a non-Russian word “skinheads .” And he immediately moved on to the pressing issue of national-territorial entities in the Russian Federation.

However, if the killers of Khursheda Sultanova (that was her name) have not yet been found, then doubt as to who is really to blame would be just appropriate. However, Vladimir Pozner expressed himself professionally/delicately, as if not on his own behalf: it’s not him, it’s others - “few people doubt” ... I, writing these lines, apparently belong to the doubting minority, although the word “doubt” “doesn’t quite express my... no, not my position... my feeling.

I know that I don’t know who killed Khursheda Sultanova, beat her brother and father. How?! And if not skins, then who? Don't know. I was not there - at the scene and at the time of the crime . I am sure that Vladimir Pozner was not there either. He and I don’t know what really happened there. Only her young killers know for sure. And, of course, her father (but this is a separate topic). Further, excuse me, I will say only platitudes, but necessary platitudes, those that do not interfere from time to time, calmly, despite the collective hysteria, to articulate again and again.

Should the killer of a little girl go to prison? Yes. But not all crimes are solved (this is true all over the world), and not only because someone is covering up for someone, it’s just not all in human will. Despite even the ambiguous order of Valentina Matvienko “to get the murderers out of the ground and arrange a show trial” (which, translated into everyday language, can mean: find someone to pin this on so that we can report).

Let's say one/several young people (apparently minors) are put in the dock. But we must soberly understand: when we say (quite rightly) that a murderer should be in prison, we are dealing with the image of that same unknown criminal, only imagined by us. And in the dock will sit not an imaginary murderer, whose punishment we today want, but a very real living citizen, who is accused of being that same murderer. But whether the defendant is really the same murderer, neither the prosecutor, nor the defense attorney, nor the judge, nor the jury knows (they were not there ), they can only rely on the amount of evidence collected by the investigation.

The evidence can be inconclusive. We must be prepared for the fact that the evidence will turn out to be so inconclusive that the accused (we don’t know whether they are criminals or not) will be released in the courtroom. This is not an argument against trial by jury or against court in general. There cannot be perfect, ideal justice in our non-ideal world (for human rights fanatics, I note that by non-ideal world I do not mean the state of the Russian Federation, but, pardon the expression, the universe as such).

Or perhaps, during the investigation and trial, completely unexpected circumstances will be revealed. Skinheads are just one of the possible versions. In the St. Petersburg weekly “MK in St. Petersburg” (2004, # 12) an article “Tajik break. Why was Khursheda Sultanova killed?”, written by journalists Alexander Makarenko, Oleg Gorbatov and Kristina Vazhenina. I would like to introduce readers to some of the results of the journalistic investigation in more detail, since I have never seen anything like this on television, where most people get information about what is happening in the country and the world.

“The father of the deceased girl, a native of Tajikistan, Sultanov Yunosjon Nuroanovich, is an interesting figure. The police report states that “Sultanov... works at the Hay market as a laborer.” Let’s add on our own - in recent months he was trading at one of the “breakdowns” of second-hand stores. hand. For reference: in our city, the income of ordinary market sellers is 100, maximum 150 dollars per month. And Sultanov has a family: wife, children. In theory, there should have been not enough money, especially since Yunosjon’s wife does not work. Sultanov, like most migrant workers, he is registered in one of the hostels in St. Petersburg. However, he rents an apartment on Boytsova Lane, a stone's throw from the Yusupov Garden. This pleasure is not cheap - as our source in the Central Internal Affairs Directorate told us, Sultanov pays about $200 a month for housing ... According to unofficial statistics from the Central Internal Affairs Directorate, about 80 percent of the Tajik diaspora in St. Petersburg is directly or indirectly connected with the drug trade, in particular heroin.The “White Death” comes to Tajikistan from neighboring Afghanistan, and from the former Soviet republic - straight to St. Petersburg. St. Petersburg operatives have caught more than a dozen Tajik drug couriers in recent years, but to no avail. The business is very profitable, and besides, according to operational data, cheap heroin is currently being “exported” from Afghanistan. Meanwhile, Sultanov’s employer at the Haymarket is an Afghan. Law enforcement agencies have no information on Yunosjon Sultanov. This may be explained by the fact that the Tajik with his wife and children recently moved to St. Petersburg. Another question: why did the gang of juvenile killers attack not Sultanov, but his young daughter? The scheme where southerners use their children to transport drugs is very common today in St. Petersburg and Moscow. After all, even if the police catch the child, the investigators will not be able to prove that the father gave him the drugs, and the child himself, due to his young age, cannot be held accountable... If we accept this version of the development of events, then individual facts begin to form a whole picture. Local junkies, knowing full well who they could take drugs from, attacked the girl in order to profit from heroin. Why so cruel? It is likely that many of them were literally hours away from “withdrawal”, and did not have the money to buy “dope.” As for the “raiders,” according to our data, the police have already identified them." .

This, I repeat, is one of the versions believe that you don’t have to in, but it is necessary to take it into account. The article naturally provoked opposing responses on the newspaper forum. From: " shuibing at 22:29:47 2004-02-25: The article was written to the point. Tajiks are famous drug dealers. And Tajik lovers, in fact, will not come within a f***ing mile of the object of their adoration . " Before: " Ar at 17:00:47 2004-02-27: I wonder how much you three were paid? Or was there an order from Above for this article? Maybe you were stoned and wrote this article? In your opinion, those BEASTS who killed the girl knew that she was smuggling drugs and that’s why they killed her? They probably have their own bureau for children... They didn’t kill Tajik because he was already lying unconscious with a broken head, and the little boy too - he rolled under a car... In short, your article is COMPLETE nonsense!!!"

Or maybe nonsense. And maybe skins. But this does not mean that interesting circumstances cannot be revealed within the skinhead version that do not fit into the ready-made schemes of chauvinism, xenophobia and other Russian fascism. So I took out the Izvestia newspaper from the mailbox. On the second page I read: “To eliminate skinheads, just pick up the phone and say 'Let's take everyone'” (2004, # 36, February 28.) . This is said by Doctor of Sociological Sciences, head of the laboratory of youth problems at the Research Institute of Complex Social Research of St. Petersburg State University, Professor Anatoly Kozlov: “In relation to a couple of [St. Petersburg skinhead] organizations, we managed to find out who financed them. In one case, a strongly nationalist anti-Caucasian group was given money by the Caucasians themselves - so that keep your fellow tribesmen at bay."

Oops-s...